Static
by lilkyonkyon
Summary: Friction can result in an imbalance of electrons, charging the two surfaces. This potential energy is known as static electricity. It will remain dormant until it either dispels over time or finds an outlet to immediately discharge. Dramione. AU Post-Hogwarts. Oneshot.


I usually shy away from the post-Hogwarts stories where Draco and Hermione have to work together in a business setting... and then randomly this came about. It doesn't provide much work detail, which I ended up liking. Hope you do too!

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**Static**

They rubbed each other the wrong way. At least, that was the nice way to put it.

In reality, their exchanges had become an insurmountable deadlock that kept both parties from even thinking about doing their jobs. Friction, in other words. But not the kind of friction that slows down a brick as it skids across concrete. Instead, imagine that same brick to be a ton of bricks, all being pulled by numerous comically-ineffectual parties, like Neville Longbottom and Colin Creevy. It was the kind of friction that caused catastrophic earthquakes with epicentres in weird places like Alaska, so that no one saw them coming.

It was also constant. Grating. Wearing the both of them down until it showed on their faces in drained ire. All of it was only made worse by their co-workers' constant ribbing.

"Take her out, already! You're driving us mad!"

"Oy, get a room, you two!"

Their wand hands would clench, and their jaws would set tight enough to shatter diamonds. The jibes simply acted as gasoline on a fire. (But some say that love is a fire—regardless of whether it will warm you or burn you to the ground.)

Draco didn't mind the attention from the others as much as Hermione, but it was still tiresome. He was engaged to some nameless, distant French cousin (once-removed, if he had glanced at the family tree properly), so hearing snide comments about shagging the company's consultant on a daily basis had worn his nerves down to the breaking point. Although, to be perfectly frank, he didn't think the faces she made at those words would ever stop amusing him.

It had only been one week since they had hired her, and Hermione was already regretting her choice to accept the job. The contract had appealed to her for a variety of reasons, but she should have known that Draco Malfoy's presence outweighed any draw that the company had. She had signed on as a marketing consultant for a six-month stint after an environmental scandal. Her work put her in close contact with the lawyers of the firm—which included the blond prat. Each day was an uphill battle to implement her plans; his resistance refusing to let her slide anywhere he didn't want her to go.

The friction between them inevitably began to charge them. The pull was too much to overcome, and their arguments became more frequent, until they were battling without a ceasefire. Occasionally, Hermione would watch her co-workers pass money during these quarrels, doubtless winnings from their never-ending bets and pools. Her life, she acknowledged sadly, had been degraded to mere office entertainment.

But that didn't stop her from pointing out his faulty logic. It was her principles that prevented her from remaining silent, because really, he was being daft. If they'd hired her for her advice, she told him, he ought to go along with every word she said. Those same principles, however justified, had been getting in the way of her actual work since day one because of him, and she'd had to stay at the office as late as midnight to catch up.

So when she caught a terrible cold two months into the job, she wasn't surprised—just relieved to have an excuse not to see his smirking face. She called in sick, took a liberal dosage of NyQuil, and promptly fell into a dreamless sleep, drooling slightly on her couch pillow while bad daytime television played in the background.

Work that day was smooth and efficient. And dreary. In fact, it was very much like the office before she was hired, Draco mused. He found himself baiting other employees into senseless fights, though none rose to his challenge. (Some even had the audacity to look amused.) It seemed that he'd grown so used to the constant pressure, its absence made him feel numb, and cold. Even more dumbfounding was the smirk that crept to his lips when he saw her the next day. "I missed you," he told her—honestly?—as she passed by his desk.

"Go head-butt a bullet," she snapped back, her nose sounding distinctly stuffed. He felt very satisfied the rest of the day, and that fact left him particularly unsatisfied. He had, Draco discovered, indeed missed her. It wasn't due to a fancy; of course not. His co-workers were very dim-witted lot, and they illogically assumed that his banter with Hermione was a symptom of some deeper attraction. Only idiots assumed so much. It was more like . . . a fetish, if you will. He needed to see her every day in order to feel like his life was worth something, even as she attempted to crush said-worthiness underneath the heel of her obnoxiously sensible shoe. That was why he had missed her.

So he asked her to lunch.

"I brought my own," she sniffled, motioning to a sorry-looking Tupperware filled with a clear chicken broth.

He scoffed. "That's pathetic. Are you trying to win the office's sympathy?"

"No, I'm trying to catch up on my work."

"You're coming with me, Granger."

"I said no thank you."

"I wasn't giving you an option."

"I'm not going anywhere; I have work to do! What's wrong with you?"

He didn't know.

In a bought of maliciousness, Draco snatched the Tupperware, pried it open and dumped its contents into the trash, winning himself an exclamation of rage followed by a coughing fit. "Come on," he said, seizing her forearm before she caught her breath to protest. "It's on me."

Hermione feebly protested as the prying office eyes watched them go. She still wasn't feeling any better, and his fingers were digging into her wrist, and all she wanted was a hot cup of tea and her down comforter, and not to be watched so knowingly by the others at the office.

Her mortal enemy dragged her to a soup shop tucked away on the streets of Wizarding London. She ordered beef barley and hot tea with honey. When Hermione tried to pay, Malfoy slapped at her hand. "I said I was buying," he said in a tone that was not at all friendly.

"I didn't believe you."

He glared and paid while she wiped her nose innocently. When their number was called, he grabbed the tray and sought out a nearby table for two. Hermione followed at a distance. The entire meal was consumed in silence, which she would have never thought possible, given how often and loudly they argued. He didn't even comment about her sniffing. When they both finished, he banished their trash and rose to leave, straightening his cloak and scarf with such care that she wondered if he was bringing her to a photo shoot next.

"Are you coming, or are you just going to stare?"

"I was going to ask if you needed to see a mirror."

Malfoy huffed in response. "Come on." In the back of his mind, he was trying to fend off the feeling that lunch hadn't been as bad as he thought it would have been, and he wouldn't have minded a second outing.

She avoided him as best as she could for the rest of the month. The task consumed a lot more of her time than she would have ever imagined. He was relentless. There were days when he would wait in her cubicle for nearly an hour, forcing her to wonder exactly what part of his job entailed stalking. Maybe it wasn't a strange obsession—maybe he was to manage consultants. She hoped as much.

Her contract was running out rapidly, and Granger was doing a marvellous job of never speaking to him. He was, in fact, impressed that she could manoeuvre around him so well when they had hired her to work _with_ him. Remarkable, really. The one time he managed to corner her, he asked her to lunch again, and his offer was thrown back in his face. Draco offered dinner as an alternative.

She slapped him. That's right, _slapped_ him. As hard as she would have if he had tried to reach a hand up her skirt in the middle of the office. Draco was so taken aback that he didn't even try and demand a reason, or even stop her before she fled in the opposite direction.

He'd felt something in that slap. A spark. A crackle. Or maybe something in his head had jarred loose with the blow—because he _really_ couldn't stop thinking about her after that. Not even at home, which was entirely new. He even had this one dream where the two of them were eating lunch again, except now she was laughing and talking to him, and he felt as if he were miles above the atmosphere, deliriously happy, especially when she leaned forward and pecked him on the lips—

Draco woke with a shout, drenched in a cold sweat. This was not how he had imagined his profession.

With grim satisfaction, Hermione noted that Malfoy had stopped trying to pursue her after she'd walloped him. The few times she had caught sight of him, he'd paled and fled so rapidly that she'd wondered if he knew something that she didn't. But no, he was simply avoiding her. She was perfectly happy during the first few days of his negligence. On the fourth, however, she realized that not only was he dodging her, he was also dodging anything that had to do with her. Including his work. She flicked through the stack of documents on her desk, all noticeably missing his signature, and sighed. It was her turn to follow him.

"Malfoy," she greeted as she walked up to his desk. His back stiffened. "I've some—"

He pushed past her and strode down the hall without so much as a nod in her direction. Shrugging, she stacked the papers on his desk and left. They reappeared on hers at the end of the day, all signed and with a small note that read, "Send a secretary next time."

Hermione chuckled and tossed it aside. She then personally delivered anything and everything that needed his hand, and more.

"I need your signature here, and here. Initial here."

"Have you received this memo yet? We have a meeting at two-thirty."

"It's Nanci's birthday today."

"How have you been, Malfoy?"

It was hard to fight off a smile when she saw his jaw clench in anger. She even fancied that his eye twitched, once. Their beloved friction was back, but in a new way. It was quiet, for one. No one in the office had any betting pools on who would win their fights, simply because they no longer fought loudly enough to take down the building. They warred silently. She was being so sickeningly sweet that it made her cringe inside. The tension built endlessly, she felt it just as much as he must. For her part, she was waiting for him to burst—shouting, raging, until he was spent enough to stop acting like a child. He'd stopped running away, though; Malfoy dealt with her the same way she imagined Ron's brother dealt with dragons. Very carefully.

Her final week came without ceremony. She'd gotten the company firmly back in the black, and all of the legal tape had been torn down. Draco was impressed, but in no way surprised. He'd known all along that she was the perfect choice; he'd lobbied for her specifically, despite some other lawyers' objections, and he was in no way ashamed of his decision. Excepting the fact that he could no longer look her in the face without remembering his dreams. Multiple dreams, now—all so nauseatingly wonderful that he longed to touch her whenever she came near. That fact alone made him doubt his sanity. After long nights of sleeplessness, the only solid truth that he could state was that he didn't want her to leave.

And that was frightening enough on its own.

Hermione knew that Malfoy was spoiled, but this was ridiculous. "No," she said. "I will not become the personal lawyer of a _family_ of lawyers."

He stared at her, as if she were speaking nonsense words in Greek. "Why not?" he demanded, so put out she nearly laughed.

"Because, Malfoy, that makes so little sense, it's a wonder that you even bothered asking."

"Did you look at your salary?"

She hadn't. Hermione idly flipped to the page. Upon finding it, she did laugh. "Entire legal teams earn less. This is ridiculous. Are you trying to be funny?" The sullen set to his mouth was enough to answer her questions. Hermione shoved the mass of papers unceremoniously into the trash bin, which earned her an outraged humph. "Now will you leave? I have work to do before I pack up."

Malfoy worked his jaw a bit before he snapped, "Fine." Then—and this made her laugh again—he stormed out of her office, then out of the building entirely. She would miss those tantrums, she absently mused. Then, not so absently, she thought of how much she would miss a lot about him. She told herself it was simply that she had grown used to the office life, and then she began to work a little more mindlessly than usual.

Which is why she didn't realize she had stayed late until the clock chimed six. She started into awareness and saw the darkness of the office. "Merlin, I haven't even started packing," Hermione murmured to no one in particular. So, when she heard a reply, she nearly leapt out of her skin.

"Do you need a hand?"

Whirling, she caught sight of Malfoy hovering just outside her office's entryway. "I, er . . . no." Then, embarrassed at her surprise, she demanded, "What are you doing here? I seem to remember you leaving."

"I called off the engagement."

For a moment, she thought that he meant a previous engagement, such as dinner. But his seriousness told her that he meant _the_ engagement. The one to that cousin — she'd heard someone mention it before.

"You were engaged?" she gasped in mock-surprise.

The sarcasm rasped against Draco's skin like sandpaper, and sent his head spinning. He could have sworn that the air around them was crackling with energy; the hairs on his arms were standing on end. Hermione absently ran a hand down her plait; she had a strange feeling that it was frizzing up, though it felt no different.

"You did know, you liar," he said after a dizzying moment. "And you're glad that it's been called off."

She openly scoffed at him, looking away. Then, at once, she glanced back and narrowed her eyes. "You didn't answer my question. Why did you come back?"

"To tell you." That energy, that charge—it was pulling him nearer, until she could feel his breaths flare over her face in clouds of dizzying heat. And why did she want to touch him so badly? As if her skin were magnetized, as if she couldn't help but pull closer still . . . .

"Well, how bloody romantic," she bit out, glowering over her flushed cheeks.

He graced her with another smirk, his eyes warm. "I like to think so." He reached for her face, but stopped just short of touching her. Hermione didn't budge, choosing instead to stare serenely into his eyes. She knew exactly where those five fingers hovered, just short of her skin. "Don't you?"

And then, with a painfully satisfying jolt—their lips met.

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Office romance, everyone. Did you like it? Did you think it was ridiculous? Please review!


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